Destiny's Most Popular Guns Revealed

Destiny has only been on the scene about four months but, in that time, Guardians the world over have spent a ridiculous number of hours grinding through the game’s various modes in order to gear up with the best firepower. In the interest of science, Bungie has compiled a spiffy little list showing off which guns players tend to equip the most.

Shooting aliens is fun. If it wasn’t, the FPS genre wouldn’t be leading the industry and players would not have dumped enough time into Destiny to warrant genuine concern. You point the thing at the bad guy, you pull the trigger the bad guy goes boom…See? Fun!

Say what you will about Destiny’s story, voice acting or (this one still kind of baffles me as a complaint) lack of content, but nobody can really deny that the game’s mechanics are spot-on, making for some of the most entertaining pure shooting action to ever hit a games console.

But even the mechanics don’t amount to much if you don’t have some awesome guns to back them up and, thankfully, Destiny has those in spades. Bungie’s Dr. Benson Honeydew decided to run a little experiment revolving around said firearms, taking a look at “billions of rows of data” to see which primary, secondary and heavy weapons are getting the most use out of Guardian level 20 and above. His findings looked at a 14-day period, the full results of which can be found on Bungie’s blog.

“Weapon use in Destiny is pretty diverse and follows a very fat 'long tail' distribution,” Honeywell said. “The guns on these lists are indeed awesome but a lot of players are finding that other, more obscure weapons better fit their tactical needs or their personal play styles. Besides, punching all of the aliens in the face is obviously the correct way to play Destiny anyway.”

As for his findings, check them out in the image below:

Honestly, considering the types of comments I see on various forums about “which gunz iz da most leet?” I was surprised by this outcome. A few factors could be to blame. For starters, some of the more common name drops for “best gun” are also some of the most rare in the game. Also, since the new Dark Below expansion dropped, of course people are going to be giving the new guns from that content a bit more attention these past couple of weeks. As for the number three primary weapon, The Stranger’s Rifle is a decent firearm that everyone gets for completing the game. Until you grind out some better gear, it makes sense that it would remain in heavy rotation.

So, which guns are your favorite? Tell us in the comments below, along with details on how it fits your personal play style.